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An evacuation route sign in Port Renfrew, B.C., after tsunami warning sirens went off in many coastal communities on British Columbia's west coast Tuesday morning. Victoria has no such alarms and instead uses a phone messaging system to alert residents of potential disasters. (Chad Hipolito/Canadian Press)

The mayor of Victoria is defending the way residents were alerted about a potential tsunami Tuesday morning.

Despite many people saying they didn't get the message at all, Lisa Helps says the city was adequately prepared for tsunami-related evacuations, which never became necessary.

"We were wanting to make sure we had to evacuate before we went ahead," she told CBC Radio's All Points West host Jason D'Souza Tuesday about the immediate hours after the warning.

"We had the resources in place and ready to deploy .… Should we have needed to evacuate, we would have been able to do so."

Helps says there were enough fire crews to go door to door and get people out of those low-lying areas.

She says that's better than a siren system that would alert people who may not need to be alerted.

"We have the luxury of resources to take a more targeted approach," the mayor said. "That's the kind of emergency management plan I think is effective: safe and orderly, not a siren ringing and 80,000 people running to goodness knows where."